1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer user interfaces. Specifically, the present invention relates to the merging of various request methods, such as dialing methods, into a single unified user interface without requiring a user selection of the request method.
2. Background and Related Art
The telephone has been one of the most pervasive inventions of the modem era. It is now common practice for an individual (throughout this specification, called a “caller”) to use a telephone to audibly converse in real-time with another individual (throughout this specification, called a “callee”) even if the caller and the callee are remotely located. Recently, the types of devices able to support telephonic communication have expanded well beyond what was conventionally thought of as a telephone. For example, digital telephones (hardwired and wireless), and some types of personal computers and Personal Digital Assistants are now able to engage in telephonic communication. Also, telephonic connections are now used to communicate non-audible data outside of the audible range.
Regardless of its physical form or the type of information communicated, each telephonic device is identified on a telephone network by a telephone number. By using a telephonic device to dial the telephone number of another telephonic device, a connection is established between the telephonic devices allowing for real-time communication.
Conventional dialing methods relied heavily on the caller's knowledge of the callee's telephone number. The caller, having knowledge of the desired telephone number, would then enter the telephone number one digit at a time via, for example, a rotary dial, a keypad, or the like. It would, however, be unreasonable to expect that a caller would have knowledge of every potential telephone number that the caller might want to dial. Therefore, numerous technologies exist that allow the user to identify a telephone number that corresponds to a desired callee.
For example, telephone books are published that alphabetically list telephone numbers corresponding to entities such as individuals and business. The entity names are typically listed alphabetically thus allowing a caller to find a particular telephone number given the entity name. This requires that a user obtain access to a telephone book, that the telephone book be of the correct region, that the desired entity be listed in the telephone book, and that the caller makes the effort of searching the telephone book correctly.
Also, a caller may dial an information line, provide the entity name, and receive the corresponding telephone number via an information service. This requires that the user access the information telephone number, which may be a number that is more easily remembered (e.g., 411 or 1-800-555-1212), and requires that the user dial an extra telephone number. Also, there may be a charge associated with the information service, which may be especially frustrating if the information service returns an incorrect telephone number.
Many telephonic devices are now equipped with a technology called “speed dial”, which allows a caller to program a telephonic device to accept a shorter number (e.g., a single or double digit number) in lieu of a longer telephone number when dialing. Although this simplifies the dialing process, the caller must still remember what speed dial number is associated with what entity. Also, the number of speed dial numbers available are, by design, limited. Accordingly, there will still be many telephone numbers that cannot be accessed by a speed dial number. Also, the use of speed dial requires some initial time and knowledge to program a particular speed dial number.
Callers may also use a call log to dial a telephone number. The user might do this by selecting the call log on the telephonic device, scrolling through a historical list of calls placed or received, select a telephone number when found, and then command the telephonic device to dial the corresponding telephone number. However, this still requires that the caller perform various electronic selections and searches in order to dial.
Telephone books, information services, speed dial, and call logs are just examples of technologies that enable a caller to dial a telephone number without knowing the telephone number beforehand. However, all of the conventional methods suffer in that they require relatively significant user effort to obtain and dial a desired telephone number if the telephone number is not already known. In particular, if the dialing method is other than a default method, the caller expends effort to select an alternative dialing method.
The amount of user effort is increased should the first dialing method selected not result in the desired telephone number being selectable. For example, the caller might search a call log only to find that the desired telephone number is not present in the call log at all. From there, the caller might select a contacts list and search through the contacts list for the telephone number, only to find that the telephone number is not listed in the contacts list. The user might then search the speed dial numbers at last resulting in the telephone number.
Accordingly, what are desired are systems, methods and computer program products for find and dialing a telephone number with reduced user effort.